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McMurray, R. and Ward, J. (2014) Why would you want to do that?' : dening emotional dirty work.',
Human relations., 67 (9). pp. 1123-1143.
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“Why would you want to do that?”: defining emotional dirty work
This article considers how and why people work with difficult emotions. Extending Hughes’
typology of the physical, social and moral taints that constitute ‘dirty work’ the article
explores the nature of a previously neglected and undefined concept, emotional dirt. Drawing
on data from a situated ethnographic study of Samaritans, we consider how the handling of
difficult and burdensome emotions, which are often written out of rational accounts of work,
is outsourced to others who act as society’s agents in the containment of emotional dirt. We
provide the first explicit definition of emotional dirt, and contribute an extension to the
existing tripartite classification of occupational taint. Moreover, in naming emotional dirt we
seek to open up a sphere of research dedicated to understanding its emergence, nature and
relational effects.
To this end we demonstrate how taint emerges as a sociological
consequence of the performance of emotional labour as emotional dirty work, whilst
considering how management of the difficult, negative or out-of-place emotions of others can
be framed as a positive experience such that it can be good to feel bad when handling
emotional dirt.
Key words:
Dirt; Dirty work; Emotional Labour; Ethnography; Management; Samaritans;
Stigma; Suicide
1
Introduction
At one time or another most of us are required to engage in tasks we think of as grubby,
humiliating or unethical – dirty tasks that impact negatively upon our sense of occupational
identity or personal dignity. Some of us are required to undertake more of this 'dirty work'
(Hughes, 1958) than others. Work may be defined as dirty in so far as:
‘It may be simply physically disgusting. It may be a symbol of degradation,
something that wounds one’s dignity. Finally, it may be dirty work in that it in some
way goes counter to the more heroic of our moral conceptions’ (Hughes, 1951:319).
Examples of occupations defined by such work include road sweepers, meat cutters, care
home attendants, morticians, abortion nurses, shoeshines and sex shop workers (Stannard,
1973; Meara, 1974; Chiapetta-Swanson, 2005; Tyler, 2012). Traditionally the nature and
effects of dirty work have been understood in terms of the physical, social and moral taints
(Hughes, 1951, 1958, 1962) that result from contact with different types of dirt or ‘dirty
tasks’: the blood that speaks to the physical contamination of butchery, the subservience of
the shoeshine that infers social mortification, or the dealing in sex that threatens to stain the
moral character of those in adult theatres. It has generally been assumed that this tripartite
classification exhausts the sources of taint that might be experienced in the course of work
(Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999). While not wishing to problematize (Alvesson & Sandberg,
2011) the core assumptions underpinning the extant analysis of physical, social and moral
taint, we do challenge the assumption that there are no other sources of work-based taint. We
do this based on two inter-related observations. First, the occupational landscape that framed
Hughes’ original construction of dirty work (1951, 1958, 1962) has changed, and with it the
focus of many work based tasks and taints. For example, since 1951 the proportion of the
UK workforce toiling in manufacturing and construction has fallen from almost half to 17%,
while those engaged in service sector occupations has almost doubled to 81% (Office for
2
National Statistics, 2013). This change in the relative composition of occupations marks a
shift from the requirements and dirt of manual labour to greater tertiary sector concern with
service provision, face work and emotions. Second, this shift in occupational types has been
accompanied by growing interest in the place of emotions in work contexts. Defined as
emotional labour, such work has been studied in terms of its nature and effects, with
particularly attention to the psychological consequences of such labour (Hochschild, 1989;
Grandey, 2000; Schaubroeck & Jones, 2000).
Less well considered have been the
sociological effects of emotional labour, particularly where contact with burdensome or
unwanted emotions threaten to taint or stigmatise the worker. Such consideration requires
that research be undertaken in that which Boyle & Healy (2003:356) identify as ‘emotionladen’ organisations, defined by the centrality of emotional labour and the ‘degree to which
service delivery is about dealing with or processing life-changing events such as birth, death
or divorce’. To this end, we explore the emotional labour of Samaritans: a UK charitable
organisation dedicated to providing support for people in emotional distress. In so doing we
usefully extend the classification of sources of ‘dirt based’ taint to include those that arise
from that which we name emotional dirt.
The article unfolds by first considering how Hughes’ (1951, 1958 and 1962) account of dirty
work is central to our understanding of why certain tasks are deemed undesirable and
degrading, and how this understanding has been developed as part of a widely used tripartite
classification of occupational taint (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999). Having noted the relative
absence of emotion in this tripartite scheme we consider the manner in which the literature on
emotions in organisations might usefully attend to a form of dirt and work that we
conceptualise as emotional dirty work.
Drawing on data from a situated ethnography
(Alvesson & Deetz, 2000) we make the case for seeing Samaritans as organisational ‘agents’
3
(Hughes, 1962) of society’s emotional dirty work. Specifically, we explore how their work
with people who are upset, isolated, suicidal or abusive might be constructed as dealing with
an under conceptualised form of dirt. We consider how such dirt is to be defined, and why
the handling of such dirt through the emotional labour of Samaritans threatens to taint the
labourer. In this way emotional dirty work – and the emotional labour it requires – is shown
to have potentially negative social consequences. Yet we demonstrate how Samaritans frame
such challenging work with negative emotions as good and satisfying work. We conclude
with a call for more research into this newly defined concept across other occupational tasks
and sectors.
Dirt, work & emotion
Everett Hughes (1951, 1958 and 1962) is credited with providing the foundational analysis
(Simspon et al. 2011) of dirty work in respect of its emergence, nature and relational effects.
Hughes never defines directly what he means by dirt or dirty work, preferring instead to
allude to the texture of such work through example. Drawing on cases as diverse as the
apartment block janitor (Hughes, 1958) and SS prison guard (Hughes, 1962) he emphasizes
the manner in which dirty work might be degrading, undignified or immoral. Dirty work is
cast as a necessary evil that repulses. Its very existence reminds us 'that the boundaries that
separate vice from virtue, good from evil, pure from polluted are permeable, and worse,
necessarily permeable’ and that ‘[t]o our disgust, good is always engaging in unseemly
compromises that implicate us’ (Miller 1997, p. 185 cited in Kreiner et al., 2006:619).
For Hughes (1958, 1962) dirty work arises from a perceived need to tackle a problem, issue
or peoples that threaten the solidarity and self-conception of a given community. It speaks to
a set of dividing practices through which in-groups define and disassociate themselves from
certain others on the basis that they are ‘dirty’ ‘lousy’ or ‘unscrupulous’ (Hughes, 1962).
4
This emphasis on dirty work as a dividing practice is also to be found in the work of Mary
Douglas (1966). Focusing on the symbolic nature of dirt, Douglas contends that it is a social
construct ‘created by the differentiating activity of the mind… a by-product of the creation of
order’ (Douglas, 1966:161). Douglas is at pains to point out that there is no such thing as
‘absolute dirt’. Rather, dirt is in the eye of the beholder who, having perceived it, shuns it
because it offends against a preferred order. This implies two conditions:
‘a set of ordered relations and a contravention of that order. Dirt then, is never a
unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt there is a system. Dirt is the byproduct of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering
involves rejecting inappropriate elements’ (Douglas, 1966:35)
Dirt is defined by its context, by its relation to preferred orders, by its perceived threat to
those orders and by a desire to keep it at a distance. Dirt is in its simplest terms ‘matter out
of place’ (Douglas, 1966:35).
When applied to people, dirt’s symbolic and social
significance lies in its ability to separate ‘clean us’ from ‘dirty them’. For Douglas (1966)
and Hughes (1962) dirt can serve as a delineating practice through which in-groups are
separated from out-groups in so far as the latter are positioned as a threat to the order and
solidarity of a community.
There is then a common thread running through the more
symbolic analysis of Douglas (1966), with its useful provision of a definition of dirt as
‘matter out of place’, and the more normative tone of Hughes’ (1958,1962) writing. Both
speak to dividing practices that distinguish the worthwhile, acceptable, clean, pure, orderly,
unblemished and good: from the worthless, unacceptable, tainted, polluted, chaotic,
stigmatized and bad (Selmi, 2012). They also contend, as Ashforth and Kreiner (1999:415)
note, that dirtiness is essentially a ‘social construction: it is not inherent in the work itself or
the workers but is imputed by people, based on necessarily subjective standards of
cleanliness and purity’. Yet, fear of contamination (literal, symbolic, moral) on the part of
those who classify ‘dirt’ means that they are rarely willing to come into contact with such
matter themselves – to deal with it – thereby creating a need for a third party or agent
5
(Hughes, 1962) in the form of the dirty worker. As considered below, it is this third party
agent who runs the risk of being tainted or stigmatized by their association with dirty tasks
and problems.
Dirty work occupations & taint
With few exceptions (see McMurray, 2012) dirty work is seen as deleterious work (Bergman
and Chalkley 2007; Haber et al., 2011) undertaken by those with few alternatives or those at
the lower levels of organizational or societal hierarchy (Hughes 1958, Jervis 2001). Dirty
workers are cast as out-groups or ‘pariahs’ (Hughes, 1962:7) whose members are ‘spoiled,
blemished, devalued, or flawed to various degrees’ as a consequence of the stigma that arises
from their work (Kreiner et al., 2006:621). Even where dirty work is deemed necessary for
the clean and orderly function of society at large (Mills et al., 2007) dirty attributions
effectively devalue the worker, marking them so that: ‘an individual who might have been
received easily into ordinary social intercourse possesses a trait that can obtrude itself upon
attention and turn those of us whom he [sic] meets away from him… He possesses a stigma,
an undesired differentness’ (Goffman, 1997: 73).
Within the dirty work literature such traits are described as ‘taints’. For the most part
‘stigma’ and ‘taint’ are used interchangeably within the literature, and while the latter is not
defined it is to be observed that in everyday language to taint is to stain, blemish, sully or
tincture some thing or someone. When applied to dirty work taint speaks to the attribution of
an undesired quality or association that reduces the prestige or esteem of an occupation
(Hughes, 1958; Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999; Mills et al. 2007). Research into dirty work
seeks to explore ‘how taint is constructed and attributed to a particular occupation at a
particular moment… by helping to reveal the socially constructed boundaries of acceptability
6
and legitimacy and of purity and impurity’ (Stanley and Mackenzie-Davey, 2012:60-61). Up
to now it has generally been assumed that there are three types of taint associated with dirty
work (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999). The first is physical taint associated with effluence,
grime, death or deleterious and unpleasant working conditions (Meara 1974; Jervis, 2001;
McMurray, 2012). Second is social taint as a consequence of association with stigmatized
publics or servility to others (see Stannard, 1973; Haber et al. 2011). Third is moral taint as a
result of proximity to notions of sin, dubious virtue or deception (see Ashforth & Kreiner,
2002; Stanley and Mackenzie-Davey, 2012; Tyler, 2012). A single occupation may be
associated with more than one taint, as in the case of the janitor who deals with the physical
garbage and filth generated by the occupants of an apartment block, while also being socially
tainted by their servility to others (Hughes, 1958).
Kreiner et al. (2006) note that where once the social psychology literature assumed that
workers’ responses to such taint would be almost universally negative in respect of low selfesteem and identity destruction, there is now growing evidence of a much broader range of
cognitive, affective and behavioral responses to such attributions. This is most readily
demonstrated through appeal to Ashforth and Kreiner’s (1999) model on the ways in which
dirty workers reframe, recalibrate or refocus the meanings associated with their tainted work
so that negative connotations are down played and positive narratives inserted in their stead.
This might involve: wrapping the dirty particulars of a job in more abstract or uplifting
values, downplaying the amount of time spent in contact with dirt, prioritising the nonstigmatised aspects of an occupation, or condemning those outside the occupation as
unworthy of passing judgment; all with a view to creating and maintaining more positive
occupational identities (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999).
7
Developments in the conceptualisation of dirty work therefore suggest that it is possible to
construct positive occupational identities in the shadow of task-based taint (Tracy and Scott,
2006). It is our contention that Ashforth and Kreiner’s (1999) refinement of Hughes’ (1951,
1958, 1962) tripartite classification of dirty work and taint might be usefully informed by a
number of significant developments in our understanding of the emotional dimensions of
work (see for example Vincent, 2011; Ward and McMurray 2011; Toegel et al. 2013).
Specifically, our own experience of research in the field of emotional labour leads us to
consider whether emotions might be positioned as dirt? If it is the case, then there is the
potential for a new classification of work-based taint that has been under-observed and underconceptualised in terms of both its nature and occupational effects. Moreover, it would
challenge the assertion that it is safe to ‘assume that the physical, social and moral
dimensions exhaust the domain sources of taint’ (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999:415).
Accordingly, the next section provides a brief account of the place of emotion in the study of
work and organizing, starting with its marginalisation.
Emotion as Marginal, Dirty and Tainting
Re-presentation of the ‘modernist’ organisation placed emotion in ontological opposition to
reason. Emotion was pushed beyond the boundaries of organisation in the belief that
‘efficiency should not be sullied by the irrationality of personal feelings’ (Hancock & Tyler,
2001:130). Following this Weberian logic, emotions were perceived to be ‘out of place’ and
were systematically marginalised in pursuit of masculine ideals of rationality within the
context of organisations (and arguably, society more broadly). Hancock & Tyler’s (2001) use
of the term ‘sullied’ in relation to personal feelings implies that not only were emotions and
feelings out of place, they were in some way dirty; threatening to taint or contaminate the
clean rational logic of efficiency. In this sense emotions were seen as marginal or disruptive
to the functioning of the modern organisation.
8
This marginalisation of emotion was challenged when Hochschild (1983) proposed that not
all emotions were excluded from organising. Her observation of the ways in which Delta
Airline’s flight attendants were paid, trained and supervised to manage their own emotions to
create an on-board atmosphere of ‘cheer’ among passengers suggested that feelings were
increasingly commodified and controlled through the prescription of ‘emotional labour’. She
defined emotional labour as the ability to ‘induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the
outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others’ (Hochschild, 1983:7).
However, the performance of positive emotions such as ‘cheer’ served to obscure from view
other emotions that were perceived by the airline to be ‘out of place’: those feelings of
fatigue from the incredibly physically demanding elements of the job; fear of the potentially
imminent dangers of faulty equipment, and; the discomfort and embarrassment from
unwanted sexual attention from male passengers. In this sense, certain emotions remain
marginal to, or outside of, preferred displays depending on the ways in which emotions are
filtered, modified and constructed by organisations and society as acceptable or unacceptable.
Such continued marginalisation is even more evident when one considers how Hochschild’s
definition of emotional labour asserts a dyadic relationship between the emotional labourer’s
management of their own emotions and the impact this should or would have on the
recipient, often a customer. Excluded from Hochschild’s definition, and subsequent
discussions of emotional labour, is the impact on the emotional labourer of the feelings,
emotions and behaviours of those ‘others’ in whom the emotional labourer is required to
‘produce the proper state of mind’ (Hochschild, 1983:7). We cannot assume, for example,
that those ‘others’ are passive recipients of the emotional labourers efforts or that their
feelings and behaviours will not impact on the emotional labourer. Such service interactions
are relational, and above all emotional.
9
To date, sociology has focused on the nature and texture of the emotional performances
required of emotional labourers. Examples include: the way nurses are expected to care and
offer support through performances of empathetic or positive emotional labour (Bolton,
2000a; Korzcynski, 2003); the contempt that debt collectors reportedly show for, and the fear
they incite in, debtors through performances of antipathetic emotional labour (Rafaeli &
Sutton, 1991; Korzcynski, 2003), and; the processes through which GP receptionists perform
emotional neutrality in an attempt to cope with the emotional complexity of the job role
(Ward and McMurray, 2011).
This is not to say that the consequences of performing
emotional labour have been overlooked, at least in psychological terms. Psychology as a
discipline has focused on the negative consequences of control, commodification and
performance by usefully pointing towards the potential for burnout (Brotheridge & Grandey,
2002), exhaustion (Grandey, 2003) and stress (Pugliesi, 1999). Yet, while there is a
substantial literature dedicated to understanding, identifying and mitigating the psychological
consequences of managing the emotions of others through performances of emotional labour
(including Schaubroeck & Jones, 2000; Grandey, 2000) there is little by way of comparable
study of the potential sociological consequences of such labour (see Korczynski & Evans’
(2013) recent analysis of status relations in the context of customer abuse for an exception).
What does it mean for the emotions of clients or customers to present as difficult or
burdensome? If such emotions are outside preferred behaviours and organisational scripts
does this mean that they are essentially matter out of place (Douglas, 1966)? If so, what are
the consequences of dealing with such matter – dirt – in terms of the position and standing of
the emotional labourer?
10
The dirty work literature does touch on the position of emotion in so far as it promotes the
notion that ‘dirty work is an activity embedded with meanings that are also emotional’
(Simpson et al., 2011: 209). Even so, emotion management tends to be described as a byproduct of physical, social or moral dirt. For example, Chiappetta-Swanson (2005) describes
the experiences of Genetic Termination Nurses who in addition to coping with the physical
and moral dirt of elective foetal termination are left to mop up the grief and loss of crying
patients when all other health practitioners have stepped aside. These nurses work to give
patients a ‘sense of emotional control’ at a time when other occupational groups have
absented themselves for fear of being tainted (Chiappetta-Swanson, 2005: 108). Something
similar is to be found in Sanders’ (2010) study of veterinary technicians in which the
physically dirty work of pet euthanasia and disposal is deemed emotionally dirty in so far as
technicians must deal with the intense sorrow of owners. This emotional component is
regarded by workers as ‘far more worrisome than the physically defiling elements’ (Sanders,
2010: 246).
These accounts, including those in which the term emotional dirty work is used but not
defined (see Sanders, 2010), highlight the continuing need to explore the ways in which such
relational work might be considered a distinct if overlapping form of dirty work. They also
raise questions around whether it is possible to conceptualise the sociological consequences
of being associated with dirty emotions (a project that, until now, has been neglected). The
resulting challenge can be summarised in three broad questions: is it reasonable to speak of
emotional dirt? If so, what are the sociological implications of working with the emotional
dirt of others in terms of taint? Finally, if individuals are engaged in emotional dirty work
that is potentially tainting, it begs the question: ‘Why would you want to do that?’
11
The Study
The aim of the study was to understand how Samaritans experience and interpret the work
they do in providing support for people in emotional distress. This included a desire to
‘experience’, in some limited sense, the ‘environment, problems, background, language,
rituals, and social relations of a more-or-less bounded and specific group of people’ (Van
Maanen, 2011:3) with a view to better understanding the activities and sense-making that
constitute their day-to-day work. Pursuant to this aim we employed a situated ethnography of
Samaritans between 2012 and 2013. A situational ethnographic approach implies a more
concentrated focus on a particular phenomenon rather than an all-embracing attempt to
capture the entirety of a culture and its relations (Alvesson & Deetz 2000). As described
below, this entails detailed observation of routine practices and critical incidences so that we
may arrive at some understanding of what it means to be an emotionally dirty worker,
including the sociological consequences of such work.
Context
The research focused on the nature of the work undertaken by Samaritans who sit at the end
of telephone lines listening to the concerns and fears of anonymous callers. Samaritans
interact with users personally, most often through the voice work of a telephone call (lasting
anything from a few seconds to several hours) in which they respond to a stranger’s request
that they listen to the latter’s emotional problems and concerns. We observed Samaritans
working shifts of between four to six hours at least once a week. All Samaritans go through a
two-stage training and mentoring process designed to ensure that new recruits understand
what are deemed appropriate emotional displays and desired emotional outcomes as part of
their organisationally prescribed emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983). These prescriptions
centre on providing empathetic and non-judgemental listening spaces intended to encourage
more reflective and emotional balanced positions on the part of the caller. A range of peer
12
observation and regularised reporting systems serve to both support and monitor the labour of
Samaritans.
It is within this context that we undertook our study of emotional labour as a
potential site for dirty work and taint.
Data collection
The primary mode of data collection involved participant observation of Samaritan work
across two branches, one in the north and one in the midlands of England. The purpose of
such observation was to achieve the degree of closeness required to understand what it is that
Samaritans think they are doing (Geertz, 1973). Practically this involved 180+ hours of ‘in
situ’ observation of Samaritan telephone and branch work designed to allow ‘intimate
observation of certain parts of their behaviour’’ (Hughes, 1984:497). Our practice was to
select shifts where we knew at least one Samaritan on duty so that we could build our
relationship with them over the weeks and months with a view to gaining deeper insights into
the complexities of their organisational life.
For the most part, observation involved sitting in branches listening to Samaritans field calls,
debrief to each other, report to leaders, and complete paperwork in the course of morning,
day and nightshifts. Our personal participation centred on making the tea, baking flapjack,
conversing with Samaritans and listening to debriefs. We were also invited to attend the
training of new recruits, meetings with outside agencies and out-reach visits. A template was
employed for recording field notes in which descriptions of key events, issues or
conversations were separated from emergent analysis (this template is available upon request
from the authors). Where the emotional tone of a moment was felt to imply that note taking
was inappropriate, observations were written up as soon as possible thereafter.
13
Considered reflexively the position of the researcher-observer affected the performance of
Samaritan work in so far as individuals paused and voiced explanations of processes whose
meanings were normally assumed and unsaid. Our presence evoked an apparent need in
many Samaritans to explain and justify particular practices, such as non-intervention
(considered below). In this sense observations were informed by in-situ conversations with
Samaritans as to their experiences, feelings, processes and perceptions as part of an attempt
to further understand the meanings they placed on events in their world (Heyl, 2001). For our
part we experienced the ‘shock that comes from the sudden immersion in the lifeway’s of a
group different to yourself’ (Agar, 1996:100 cited in Cunliffe, 2010:235) especially in
relation to the volume and emotional intensity of Samaritan work; such that we became
overwhelmed by the vulnerability, despair, misery and unhappiness that were the everyday
work of Samaritan calls. We experienced the ‘vicarious trauma’ that can be evoked by
research on sensitive topics, along with the potential for exhaustion that can arise from such
work (Dickson-Swift et al., 2009). The effect was to heighten our own empathetic
understanding of what it might mean to deal with emotional dirt.
To these more nuanced methods (Tracy, 2000) were added six semi-structured interviews
with Samaritans who were keen to participate in the study but whom we had not observed.
Semi-structured interviews were recorded and fully transcribed. Other texts were also read
(e.g. Samaritan policy documents) as part of the process of getting to know the organisation,
though they were not explicitly analysed as research artefacts for the present article. In
combining these data sources the research employed a variant of triangulation.
Analysis
Claims for triangulation are far from unproblematic. Diverse methods and methodologies
may not support each other with the result that production of coherent narratives becomes
14
problematic. This may also discourage the inclusion of occurrences or utterances that, while
useful or potentially enlightening, lack corroboration (Maggs-Rapport, 2000).
Such an
approach would also suggest a search for positivistic certainty that is at odds with an
ethnographic sensitivity intended to describe individual views and shared cultures from the
perspective of participants. Ours is not then a triangulation that employs multiple methods
and measurements in order to close in on a ‘true’ picture of reality. It is more akin to that
which Wolfram-Cox and Hassard (2005) describe as holographic convergence.
In this
variant of triangulation there is an emphasis on identifying cases that best describe the dataset
through ‘detailed qualitative description of an individual or situation, supplemented by ample
quotations and detailed contextual information’ with view to constructing pictures of the
wider phenomena ‘contained within the parts’ (Wolfram-Cox & Hassard, 2005:118). In our
case the detailed description is derived from our direct observations of Samaritans’ voice
work with callers, and supported by quotations from in-situ and semi-structured interviews
with those labourers; the combination of these various sources giving a ‘broad and rich
picture of the situation concerned’ (Alvesson & Deetz, 2000:204). This included working to
ensuring that Samaritans still recognised and held as valid the worlds we described in this
newly constituted research object, by adopted the practice of feeding results back to
participants (Lindebaum and Fielden, 2011) through both oral and paper presentations. Their
observations and responses were then usefully rewoven into the writing as part of the process
of collaborative co-construction (Heyl, 2001).
The analysis itself was inductive in so far as our intention was to ‘generate theory grounded
in specific instances of empirical observation’ (Johnson, 2008:112). This was informed by
Glaser and Strauss’s (1967) constant comparative method wherein the collection and analysis
of observational data proceed iteratively: one informing the other so as to generate theory.
Informed by sensitising concepts (Johnson, 2008) emergent categories included: emotional
15
labour, modes of emotional labour, types of caller emotion, the status of caller emotions, the
experience of working as a Samaritan, and the routines of Samaritan work. Further data
collection enabled addition to and refinement of nascent categories up to the point where
detailed qualitative description of representative cases or situations was possible, while also
arriving at a point where no major new themes emerged. The result was a number of
recurring and well-developed categories with examples grouped together under three main
themes: (i) emotional dirt – comprising: emotion, emotional labour, empathy, burden, threat,
difficult, out of place, outsourced, transgression, solidarity; (ii) taint - stigma, marks,
outsiders, distancing, visceral, contamination, taboo, and; (iii) the good call / sin of
intervention - emotional labour, empathy, privilege, limits, divide, intervention, satisfaction,
skill, performance, commodification. Each theme is considered in turn below through
reference to the work and experiences of Samaritans (pseudonyms being employed to ensure
anonymity).
As revealed below, emotional dirt is attached/attributed to the expressed
feelings of the caller, while taint describes the visceral response of outsiders to an
occupation’s proximity to such dirt. The good call and sin of intervention consider Samaritan
experiences of and responses to such dirty work and taint. We begin with a description of
seemingly unrelated and differentiated accounts of caller emotions that combine to construct
a picture (Wolfram-Cox & Hassard, 2005) of emotional dirt.
Findings
Emotional Dirt
Compared to the observed lives of meat cutters, janitors, nurses dealing with foetal
termination or those engaged in the sex trade, the work of Samaritans has very little of the
vivid and immediate repulsion of other dirty occupations. Working in dedicated branches at
the end of the telephone line there is no material contamination to speak of. For the most part
there is no rich description to be had of physical tasks or encounters that declare spatial
16
proximity to physical, social or moral filth. We contend that the work of Samaritans is
subtler in so far as its relation to matter-out-of-place is hidden in the emotional encounters of
two distant people separated and anonymised by a phone line.
To understand the work of Samaritans – and with it the nature of emotional dirt – it is
necessary to know something of the calls they handle, both in terms of their range and
content. We observed that people contact Samaritans for a wide range of problems including
mental health issues, self-harm, sexual abuse, relationship concerns, loneliness, sadness,
suicidal feelings or because they are in the process of suicide. From the perspective of
Samaritans with whom we spoke many such calls arise because people feel they have
nowhere else to turn. Some callers have no one to turn to in a literal sense because they have
been placed outside of the help normally offered by the community. Callers like Lula told
Samaritans how she had been abused as a child, beaten as a wife and was now the sole carer
for her elderly mother, while also struggling with her own mental health problems. Lula was
barred from calling the police, social services, the community mental health team, local
hospital and fire brigade. Alone and isolated Lula was a regular caller – sometimes calm,
sometimes angry and threatening – she was what Samaritan Kevin described as one of a
growing number of contacts who had been excluded from statutory services because of
unseemly emotional outbursts at public servants and apparently inappropriate service
demands. In such cases it appeared to Samaritans that their organisation was being used as
the contact of last resort for people at the margins of society whose emotional needs were
being effectively outsourced.
Other calls spoke of emotions that were out of place because they were perceived as a threat
to an individual’s self-concept. For example, we observed Seb take a call from a young
married man concerned that he was gay. A sexual encounter with a male colleague at work
17
had left the caller with feelings and desires he did not understand. He rang Samaritans to talk
through his feelings because he felt unable to confide in his wife and unwilling to share his
thoughts with male colleagues or friends. His call spoke to feelings that he deemed ‘out of
place’ in so far as they disrupted the order of both his masculine and heterosexual lives,
effectively threatening his self-concept. As Seb listened he reflected the caller’s thoughts and
concerns back to him as part of what we would describe as an empathetic process of listening
and emotional care. It was our observation that while the call spoke to moral dirt in so far as
sexuality and fidelity may be linked to notions of dubious virtue or sin, Seb made no such
judgments in respect of the call or caller. Instead, the matters worked over by Seb were the
feelings of the caller in terms of why he felt unable to talk to others, and how events and
emotions impacted on his self-concept.
We observed Randolph take a similar call in which he worked through a caller’s fears about
cross-dressing. Randolph felt that the “rest of the world still views people like cross dressers
as inappropriate, wrong, shocking or strange”. Here there is a hint at the ways in which
disruptive or problematic emotions (e.g. caller fear over cross-dressing) can overlap with
social and moral perceptions of threats to preferred orders in so far as such emotions are
likely to confuse or contradict treasured classifications and as such be condemned as dirt. It
also reminds us that emotional dirt, as with other forms of dirt, is a matter of perspective,
such that the boundary between pure and polluted is far from stable; dependent as it is on the
sense making of participants and observers.
The overlaps between moral and emotional matter-out-of-place are perhaps most stark, and
arguably less equivocal, for Samaritans working with self-confessed paedophiles and abusers.
Samaritan Melissa suggested, “…chances are they are ringing you because they know they
are going to do something society says is wrong”. Callers were said to be aware that
18
Samaritans would not judge them, though neither would they condone their actions (more on
this below in The Sin of Intervention). As long as the call centered on the discussion of
feelings, Samaritans would listen and seek to help the caller consider why it is they
felt/desired the way they did. However, as Samaritan Mary explains such calls were also far
from unproblematic in terms of how those outside the organization perceive the work that
Samaritans undertake:
“I think the general public respect the work Samaritans do… But then pedophiles
are mentioned and [whispers] that’s a little bit grubby! “We don’t want to know
about that! How could you?” But I then say to that well, where can a pedophile go
to talk to somebody because there ain’t nowhere.... And you almost have to say “I
do not condone pedophilia at all”, you have to put that caveat in just in case….
But these human beings have to talk to somebody, if you want them to stop doing
what they are doing what are they supposed to do?”
Here Samaritans work with the feelings and emotions of those who are deemed problematic
and dirty by society and redolent of sin. Samaritans such as Mary take on the burden of
maintaining the boundary between in-groups and out-groups, clean and dirty, by willingly
exposing themselves to the immoral acts, taboos and misplaced feelings of others that
threaten the wider community’s sense of solidarity. We might understand the sentiment of
‘oh that’s a little bit grubby’ as the sociological consequences of the work undertaken – a
product of handling emotions perceived by society as dirty.
There are other types of call such as Samaritan Cybil’s encounter with an elderly woman who
could not get anyone to listen to her fears of dying alone; Samaritan Evelyn’s discussion with
the person actively committing suicide who just wanted to tell someone why they were taking
their own life without being judged or dissuaded, and; Colin’s discussion with a railway
ticket master who, unable to confide in his wife or employer, needed to ‘tell someone how he
felt” about having observed a man hop in front of an oncoming train. These were just some
19
of the examples of Samaritans dealing with ‘caller emotions’ that were out-of-place in so far
as they had no other apparent space for being worked through, heard or managed.
As diverse as such encounters are; interpreted collectively they describe emotions that are in
some important sense out of place. They are positioned by self or other as that which we
name as emotional dirt. In the above contexts emotional dirt is attached/attributed to the
expressed feelings of the caller. This presentation then invites an occupational response in
which Samaritans perform emotional labour. We define emotional dirt as expressed feelings
that threaten the solidarity, self-conception or preferred orders of a given individual or
community. To be clear, the attribution of dirty status is not a matter of empirics. It describes
a subjective state assigned by either the individual involved or outside observers through
which emotions are deemed to be in some sense polluting. Such pollution is repellent to the
extent that it threatens a sense of solidarity, stability or order.
We do not discount the possibility of there being other forms or signifiers of emotional dirt
particular to other occupational contexts. What is important for the moment is that we
recognise the existence of emotion as dirt. Where such dirt occurs in the context of work it
requires a particular occupational response. Just as the filth that is attributed to household
waste is met by the physical labour of the janitor, so the burden of the emotional dirt
associated with the suicidal feelings of others is met by the emotional labour of Samaritans.
In so doing they stand as third party agents of dirty work. Moreover, such proximity to dirt
carries with it the threat of contamination and taint.
Taint
Few people like to be associated with dirt; hardly surprising given that dirtiness is associated
with badness, stigma, danger and that which is to be avoided. So it was for our Samaritans
20
who, on reading a first draft of this article expressed concern with such a dirty attribution.
They were understandably concerned that readers may mistakenly assume that Samaritans
thought callers were dirty; an assumption at odds with the values and practices of an
organisation predicated on treating callers with non-judgemental respect and empathy. This
led to discussion of whether it was right for the researchers to position Samaritan work as
dirty work.
The operationalization of physical, social and moral taint forwarded by Ashforth & Kreiner
(1999) suggests that all forms of dirty work are united by two common denominators: the
visceral repugnance of outsiders to the work, and the question 'how could you do that'. We
understand visceral to refer to that ‘affecting the viscera or bowels regarded as the seat of
emotion; pertaining to, or touching deeply, inward feelings’ (Oxford English Dictionary,
Online). This emphasis on the embodied experience of feeling aligns with Hochschild’s
(1983:17) interpretation of feelings as bodily signal functions through which we become
aware of our own viewpoint on the world shaped to and by social form. The question then is
whether the emotional labour of Samaritans ever elicits such a visceral response?
Cath, like all Samaritans we interacted with, made it clear that personally she felt no
embarrassment or sense of personal taint as a consequence of her willingness to explore
feelings around the fear, anxiety, sex, abuse and despair of callers. And yet she recognised
that “outsiders” may not see it the same way. Mirroring the title of Ashforth and Kreiner’s
(1999) article How could you do that?, Cath noted that friends and acquaintances often
comment ‘why would you want to do that?’ or ‘oh no, I couldn’t do that!’ when they discover
the kind of emotional labour that being a Samaritan involves. Time and again Samaritans
recounted examples of ‘outsiders’ distancing themselves from the work of Samaritans.
Responding to this article, Samaritan Michelle reinforced the point when she recounted being
21
introduced at a social gathering to strangers as a Samaritan: “it killed the mood of the party –
everyone went quiet and gently moved away”. There was a sense in which their occupation
was viewed as necessary yet stigmatising, such that workers were tainted with an undesired
differentness. In common with the extant literature on dirt and taint considered above,
Samaritan Cath believes that such responses stem from peoples’ fear that “they might, you
know, catch it or be touched by it” that they may in some way be tainted if they “get too close
to suicide, upset or mental health issues”.
As Samaritan Brian noted, theirs is an
occupational label that speaks of contact with people that “the rest of us [society]” do not
want to know about; apparent “monsters” in the case of paedophiles, which speak of feelings
and acts that are deemed threatening and taboo.
In the case of work with paedophiles it was clear that the visceral repugnance evoked by the
emotional dirt of the caller’s feelings is reinforced by an overlapping attribution of moral
dirtiness as a result of proximity to notions of sin. In this context there is a double sense in
which dirty work may ‘leave a mark’ (Samaritan Chris) inviting social prejudice or
stigmatisation by outsiders. In the context of Samaritan work we therefore contend that the
potential for ‘emotional taint’ arises from proximity to the emotional dirt of others (which
may overlap with and being reinforced by other forms of dirt). We have in mind emotions –
such as lust, despair, suicidal feelings or hate – to which outsiders experience a visceral
repugnance on the basis that the expressed feelings of client/customers/callers are deemed
burdensome, taboo or polluting in so far as they threaten to contaminate well-ordered lives.
At one level, proximity to such emotion reminds us that so called ‘monsters’ live among us.
At another, that the spectre of emotional turmoil is never far away: that to be close to the
source, or those who handle it, may in some unspecified sense threaten pollution. In such a
context emotional labour imposes a social cost (i.e. taint) on the worker as Samaritans’ very
proximity to dirt threatens to mark them as spoiled, blemished or flawed.
22
The possibility that emotional labour may be tainting work when framed by our definition of
emotional dirt is something that has not been considered before. We might, therefore,
presume that where emotional labour is undertaken as emotional dirty work and is tainted by
its association with the emotional dirt of others it must necessarily present as negatively
experienced work. And yet, Samaritans were united in their view that emotional dirty work
could also be good and satisfying work. This was most readily manifest in the notion of the
‘good call’ through which job satisfaction was gained, though also restrained by that which
we label the ‘sin of intervention’.
The Good Call & the Sin of Intervention
Observing and talking to Samaritans we understood a ‘good call’ to be one for which a
volunteer has trained and is able to employ their skills in empathetic listening. They are also
encounters in which Samaritans express repletion in ‘being there’ for those with unmet
emotional needs. The good call is a difficult and challenging call. As Samaritan Steve
concludes an encounter, with someone in the process of committing suicide, it appears as if
the call is written on his face. It is written in terms of an empathetic concern and wonder at
the emotional pain, loneliness and despair of the other. But there is also a sense of privilege
at having been able and available to take their call – “it was a real privilege to be there for
them – they kept thanking me, and I would say “don’t thank me, it’s what I’m here for””
(Samaritan Steve).
The notion that Samaritan work was a privilege was a recurrent theme of observed
conversations and training, wherein Samaritans spoke of the privilege of being let into the
‘intimate parts of the lives of others’ (Samaritan Cath). ‘Privilege’ suggested a more modest
framing of the affect of the work on the worker than the expressed pride observed among
23
those engaged in the physical dirty work of say, meat cutting. In the latter case, workers have
been observed to extol a culture of heroic forbearance in the face of tasks that others could
not stomach (see Meara, 1974; Ackroyd & Crowdy, 1990; Simpson et al., 2011). Samaritans
were more diffident, unwilling to accept praise or credit for having ‘saved another one’ or
handled emotions that others might not stomach (though fewer than half the new recruits we
observed made it through Samaritan training). Samaritans’ empathetic focus on the ‘other’
engendered a more modest account of self-worth in which there was a quiet contentment at
having learnt and employed the skills required to respond to what we understand as the
emotional dirt of callers. This served to restrain the overt self-praise exhibited in more
masculinised and physical work cultures.
In common with the other forms of dirty work considered above, the ‘good call’ was
associated with personal satisfaction, particularly where it allowed a display of skill. Yet, the
satisfaction to be gained from dealing with the emotional problems of others as part of the
‘good call’ was circumscribed by organisationally imposed limits on what Samaritans could
do for the caller. Claire explained this in terms of limits on the desire to “do more” in the
face of an “overwhelming urge to rescue the caller, especially if they are old in my case… I
want to find them and make them some tea and give them some scones”. For the modern
secular Samaritan such intervention is to be resisted and avoided. Samaritans are not allowed
to intervene in the lives of others through action or advice: their task is to listen, encourage
reflection and maintain the autonomy and self-determination of the caller. To do otherwise is
to risk being asked to leave Samaritans. Thus, while there is a sense in which the dirt that
flows down the line might be washed away or cleansed through intervention and direction, all
who work within Samaritans know that any personal satisfaction that comes through action
may be short lived if they are subsequently required to leave the organisation.
24
The desire to intervene ‘and feel good about it’ (Samaritan Claire) did not always arise from
a desire to help the caller. For example, Samaritan Lin confided between calls that when
dealing with paedophiles “sometimes you just want to punch them [screws up her face and
fist] but you don't”. Instead she notes that she must conceal from the caller her disgust and
anger at the moral, social and emotional dirt that comes down the telephone line by offering
an emotional performance she does not feel. This management of emotions by Samaritans is
identifiable as surface acting in that the worker’s outward appearance is managed by
pretending to feel what they do not such they deceive others about what we really feel, but do
not deceive themselves. Emotional labour is being used here to facilitate the delivery of the
emotional support that both the callers and Samaritans as an organisation expect. In this
sense, emotional labour is being used to manage the exposure and performance of the worker
to emotional dirt (i.e. the lust of the paedophile).
Procedures for debriefing to other
Samaritans, along with access to counselling support, help the worker cope on a
psychological level with the encounter with dirt. This does not however overcome the more
sociological effects of being tainted by the encounter with emotional dirt as wider society and
local communities still seek an answer to the question ‘What do you want to do that for?’
Samaritan Bob described this difficulty in respect of an on-going choice to either ‘carry on
being a proper Samaritan or to be a human being’ as non-Samaritans judge the social
acceptability of contact with, and non-intervention in the acts of, those such as paedophiles.
In essence the dirty worker faces the possibility of being held accountable for their activities
by outsiders who may disapprove of such acts, and hence, the worker performing them.
In the above examples emotional dirty work emerges as part of a wider set of processes
intended to rationalise and order emotion. It requires a commodification of emotions in so
far as surface acting, empathetic care, or performances of emotional neutrality speak to voice
work designed to produce an emotional state in others in the context of organisational
25
controls. Within Samaritans, emotional labour is employed in the management of dirt in such
a way that it allows for the play of human agency by skilled workers who juggle the demands
posed by organisationally defined ‘sins’ and personally experienced ‘good’ calls.
This
juxtaposition of ‘good calls’ with ‘the sin of intervention’ points to the complexity of
emotional dirty work in so far as it is a source of overlapping concern, anxiety, satisfaction
and performance. Often centred on negative emotional states with overlapping risks from
social and moral dirt, it is work that threatens to taint Samaritans due to proximity to
burdensome feelings that disrupt preferred social orders and threaten to confuse or
complicate the clean/dirty divide. Even so, the good call can be a source of satisfaction for
Samaritans, allowing them to employ the listening skills in which they have been trained: a
simultaneous challenge and privilege.
Discussion
The aim of this article has been to draw attention to the nature and experience of working
with difficult emotions. It has been our contention that such work can be usefully understood
as a distinct if overlapping form of dirty work (Hughes, 1951, 1985, 1962; Ashforth and
Kreiner, 1999; Simpson et al., 2012) that describes the function and sociological effects of
particular types of organised relations. To date, dirty work has been understood to relate to
tasks delegated to agents mandated to deal with problems, issues or peoples that threaten the
solidarity or self-concept of a community (Hughes, 1962). It speaks to a set of dividing
practices through which agents work to maintain the preferred order of organised systems by
containing or removing ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas, 1966). Those individuals who act as
agents of dirty work risk being tainted by their contact with matter out of place (Ashforth and
Kreiner, 1999) in so far as they remind us of our proximity to dirt and the fragility of the
boundaries that are intended to keep dirt away (Douglas, 1966; Kreiner et al. 2006). Until
now such taint is assumed to take just three forms: physical, social and moral (Ashforth &
26
Kreiner, 1999). Based on our research with Samaritans we contend that emotion can stand as
a fourth form of dirt and taint. In naming emotional dirt we seek to open up a sphere of
research dedicated to understanding its emergence, nature and relational effects.
The emergence of emotional dirty work predates its naming. Samaritans have worked with
burdensome and threatening emotions since the 1950s, while the presence of emotional dirt
can be read into extant accounts of other types of physical work (Chiappetta-Swanson, 2005:
Sanders, 2010). Our contribution in explicitly defining emotional dirt for the first time is to
bring its presence and implications to the fore. We open up a conceptual space in which to
look again at the challenges faced by those who work with the emotions of others, in the hope
of better understanding the nature and effects of this particular form of dirty work. Future
research on the emergence of emotional dirty work might consider: why certain occupations
are required to engage with the emotional dirt of others; whether engagement in emotional
dirty work reflects a formal or informal requirement of employment, and; the degree to which
emotional dirt is acknowledged and accepted by those inside and outside the occupations
engaged in such work.
As to the nature of emotional dirty work we have identified it as that which requires
engagement with the expressed feelings of others’ (customers, clients, callers) that threaten
the preferred order of a given individual or group. We have in mind emotions that are
deemed out of place, contextually inappropriate, burdensome or taboo. In common with
Douglas (1966) we note that such matter out of place is contextually relative and socially
constructed in so far as emotional dirt is in the eye of the beholder rather than an objective
state (Dick, 2005). Emotional dirt is to be observed in the work of Samaritans where clients
perceive there is nowhere else to share their problematic feelings, or; where organisations,
institutions or communities fail to provide required support in dealing with the burdensome
27
emotions that arise from daily living or working (Fine, 1996; Frost, 2003; Gabriel, 2012).
Given the contextually relative and socially constructed nature of dirt it is likely that what
constitutes ‘emotional dirt’ will vary across occupations. Whether and why anger, ecstasy,
despair, joviality, desire or rage are deemed ‘dirty’ in the work of a particular occupational
context will need to be elucidated in future research so that we might begin to understand
how the varying nature of dirt effects the character and experience of labourers, while also
being mindful of the similarities that unite them.
Finally, in considering the relational effects of emotional dirty work we have focused on the
potential for occupational taint.
In so doing we have moved beyond more traditional
concerns with the negative psychological effects of emotional labour (e.g. exhaustion,
burnout and stress) to focus on the sociological costs of inducing or suppressing feeling in
order to produce the proper state of mind in others (Hochschild, 1983). That is not to say that
that a psychological lens might not enlighten future understanding of emotional dirty work.
We recognise that psychological resilience may be an important factor in determining which
Samaritans complete training and remain in service. There is also work to be done on
understanding how different individuals cope with the immediate and long-term effects of
handling the burdensome emotions of others and, relatedly, their relative ability to feel good
about such work. Such concerns are however outwith the scope of this article.
Returning to the sociological implications of Samaritan work, our research suggests that
performing emotional labour with respect to emotional dirt (e.g. in relation to those who feel
suicidal, lonely or despairing, or those with socially unacceptable sexual feelings) is to invite
a visceral response from those outside the occupation: a response that speaks to a suspicion
that the worker is somehow blemished or spoiled (Kreiner et al. 2006) by their proximity to
emotional dirt – it evokes the question ‘why would you want to do that?’
28
From the
perspective of Samaritans the only people who fully understand why you would want to ‘do
that’ are fellow emotional dirty workers. They appreciate that while labouring with negative,
burdensome and tainting emotions can be difficult work it is also satisfying work.
As
considered elsewhere in the extant literature, difficult and tainted work can be rewarding
work in so far as it affords a sense of pride, satisfaction or interest (Meara, 1974; Ackroyd &
Crowdy, 1990; Tyler, 2012). To this end Samaritans speak of the ‘good call’ that allows
satisfaction in the deployment of newly acquired skills in empathetic listening and care
(Korczynski, 2003) and the ‘privilege’ of being there. There are limits to what might be done
for or to a client such that the experience of emotional labour is heavily contingent on the
overarching organisational context (Lindebaum and Fielden, 2011). All the same, the intraoccupational relational effect of emotional dirty work can be to increase the worker’s sense
of social solidarity. Samaritans referred to this in terms of an intense sense of community
and belonging based in part on a collective understanding of the value and challenges of the
work they do.
Conclusion
To conclude, this article contributes to our understanding of the manner in which dirt is
organised within and across organisational boundaries, paying particular attention to the
sociological consequences of the identification, conduct and experience of emotional dirty
work. Just as there are workers who physically clean the streets or tackle social deprivation
or enforce moral codes, so too there are those who manage the burdensome and disruptive
emotions of others. As with other forms of dirt, dealing with emotions that are burdensome,
threatening and out-of-place is important in so far as such work is necessary for the smooth
functioning of wider organisational and societal systems, whether at the level of
organisational toxins or community well being (Frost 2003). In the case of Samaritans there
is clear evidence to suggest that they engage in performances of emotional labour to manage
29
both their own emotions and the emotions of callers, such labour being intensified in the case
of very strong emotions that are positioned as dirty in that they threaten preferred social
orders (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999). In this sense, dirty emotions have the capacity to taint
those who handle them; it is this taint that we argue is a sociological consequence of the
performance of emotional labour as emotional dirty work. Through the provision of an
explicit definition of emotional dirt and an indication of the complexity of its consequences
we have opened up a space for research that might usefully explore the relationships between
emotional dirt, emotional labour and emotional taint in as yet unconsidered contexts.
Acknowledgement
We offer our special thanks to Samaritans who, individually and collectively, were so
generous in allowing us into their worlds. We have learnt much from our time with them,
and continue to admire the vital work that they do. We also thank the Special Issue editors
and anonymous reviewers for their patience and expertise in the production of this article.
The authors take full responsibility for the content of the article.
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